Soilwork - The Panic Broadcast (2010)

Artist/Album: Soilwork - The Panic Broadcast
Totally Subjective Number Rating: 4/10
Recommended if you like: I would recommend this to anyone in the front row of a metalcore show.
Released by: Nuclear Blast
Favorite Tracks: “Late for the Kill, Early for the Slaughter,” “Enter Dog of Pavlov”

Members of Soilwork have indicated in interviews that they wanted this album to feature “catchy choruses” and be more technical than past albums. I don’t think this is an overwhelming success on either front. Far from being a solid melodic death metal release, this album approaches what I would call a mallcore/metalcore or even a nu metal sound sometimes, and that is a huge turn off. The band throws some melodic passages and clean singing into the mix, but they do so without tact, with the abrupt turn halfway through “Sweet Demise” being just one example. I think a lot of young bands tend to do this; they think that melody is the same thing as catchiness and it isn’t. I don’t think the transitions from verse to chorus or from heavy to soft are all that smooth and they seem totally arbitrary. The clean parts are obnoxiously faux-metal and they convey to me absolutely no believable emotion. They’re certainly melodic, as in not heavy, but that doesn’t make them catchy. Seven years ago I’d have been all over these songs, rocking out in my The Used t-shirt. Now it just sounds sort of lame. As for the technical thing, I haven’t heard their last album and it’s been a long time since I listened to their earlier stuff, so I have no basis for comparison. This isn’t overly technical; within the metal community, this caliber of guitar playing is rather common, but it’s miles above anything I could do with a guitar and there are some nice guitar riffs. Actually, the band is catchier when they just go balls-to-the-wall heavy instead of trying to turn in some anthemic chorus. Even when the guitarists show their chops, the songs are often ruined by horrible vocals. “Epitome” has an awesome solo but the vocals throughout the song ruin it for me. I like melodic death metal, but there are so many albums that do it more intensely, more technically, and pay better attention to the cohesion and flow of each song. I saw some live clips that inspired me to check this album out, but the intensity of that show just wasn’t there on this album. Maybe their older stuff is better. Teenage bands everywhere have adopted strains of hardcore and metal and sort of made it their own but too often it feels too controlled, tame even, and Soilwork’s latest album is an unfortunate example of this.